Homesick

October 3, 2007

Life... Perhaps it is an intricate dance. Or maybe a beautiful symphony. A glorious voice that can meander up a scale and down it again in one fell swoop. I am not sure.

I feel homesick. Literally sick to my stomach that I am so far away from the people I love. People who would treasure my company. I wonder if they can feel my love for them from half a world away?

Yes, I am homesick. How can I be so happy here, yet long for my family so desperately? To feel as if I have both feet on Mars, too far away to provide the support I desperately want to give. Wishing for one second that domani really meant domani. That Skype could replace the stupid phone cards that never work. Or that the post office didn’t have seven lines to maneuver all in Italian.

I love this place. Love that I can ride my bike to work, even if it leaves me grease stained. Love that I can see buildings constructed by the very Romans I have spoken about for so many years. I love the people who look into my eyes, have a sparkle that runs deep and wild and their passion extends to all that they do. I have never felt so alive, so able to enjoy each moment for the sublime majesty it is. (Yes, my two favorite words are still sublime and majesty). But I suppose life, no matter how majestic, is always a little bittersweet. There will always be moments when you can’t be with the people you love. Can’t look into their eyes and show them you too, have tears welling in your eyes because of the pain that they are now feeling. Or give them a hug, a hug that allows their body to melt into yours. There will always be times when you long to be there to giggle like a seven year old. When you will miss the moment in which your dearest friends get to tumble down that grassy hill, belly laughing the whole way. How do you ever stop missing them, the people and the moments? How do you ever reconcile that feeling, of knowing you are where you are supposed to be, yet wanting to be there with them too?

So, I suppose it is then, when you realize how deep and complex the heart is. When Cooper said, he carried me in his heart, deep. I cried. Yet, he knew then, and I suppose, taught me, that love is not about being physically in someone’s life, although I think we would all agree that it is nice. No, instead, I feel the deepness of my own heart. As I am here thinking, hoping, sending all my love to so many places throughout the world. It takes my breathe away, how big my heart feels. I half wonder how it doesn’t feel over- extended and weak. But it doesn’t, instead it feels huge. Huge enough to kiss the lips of the love of my life, eat a dinner to celebrate my uncle’s birthday, play a game of kickball with my sister and my nephews, help Trenton bike up Green Street, “talk” sports in the upstairs hallway of GCS, share an ipod and a snack with people who gaze at the moon, make a diamond sparkle on someone’s neck and share a cup of coffee and conversation at a large farmhouse table with the two best people on the planet. It all seems possible….
Possible and real....
I hope it does to all of you too!